User-friendlier design

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Eep²

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Jul 21, 2007, 2:48:48 AM7/21/07
to Semantic Forms
I'm trying to use MediaWiki to create a database for my 3D Game
Comparison (http://tnlc.com/eep/compare/ ), and I'm trying to use
Semantic Forms to create forms (ideally, the one at
http://tnlc.com/eep/compare/gameform.html ) for computer/video game
entries. I have categories for games, companies, engines, player
characters, etc, and I want the form to automatically generate
"select" pull-down lists that contain the names of the various pages
within the appropriate category. Unfortunately, I don't see an input
type of "select list" (whatever) for Semantic Forms. I also want to
have forms for company submission and to allow "free text" fields for
just about everything, which contain more detailed info, an entry that
isn't in the select list, etc. Is all of this possible to do with
Semantic Forms and, if so, how would I go about doing this,
specifically? Thanks.

guoqian

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Jul 21, 2007, 5:50:42 PM7/21/07
to Semantic Forms
Hi,

Did you take a look at the "Default input types for data types"
section in semantic form homepage? You may see a "dropdown" input type
for data type "Enumeration". That means if you set an attribute as
Enumeration type with a list of "Allows value" defined, you will see a
dropdown list for corresponding attribute in your semantic form.

Guoqian


On Jul 21, 1:48 am, Eep² <e...@tnlc.com> wrote:
> I'm trying to use MediaWiki to create a database for my 3D Game

> Comparison (http://tnlc.com/eep/compare/), and I'm trying to use
> Semantic Forms to create forms (ideally, the one athttp://tnlc.com/eep/compare/gameform.html) for computer/video game

Eep²

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Jul 21, 2007, 6:58:13 PM7/21/07
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Yea, I checked that type out but on http://ontoworld.org/wiki/Type:Enumeration it doesn't mention anything about a dropdown and
implies the type to just be a list.

What I want is for the "allows value" article to automatically pull category groups (games, companies, engines, player characters,
etc) without the "allows" value" article having to be manually updated everytime a new category is created (of which there will be
hundreds, eventually, for every possible field in my current gameform at the aformentioned URL.

Plus, for each dropdown, checkbox, or radio button (is that input type even possible?), I want a blank text field for custom/new
terms not already present in the list (and some misspelling/error-checking would be nice to offer suggestions of possible existing
terms) which, once approved, will become part of the form for future selection.

Then I want to pull in all of these fields from games which can be configured to only show certain games/features (fields) with the
game name in columns and the features/fields in rows.

Are these things possible with Semantic Forms and, if so, how would I implement them? Thanks.


From: "guoqian" <gqj...@hotmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, July 21, 2007 2:50 PM

Did you take a look at the "Default input types for data types"
section in semantic form homepage? You may see a "dropdown" input type
for data type "Enumeration". That means if you set an attribute as
Enumeration type with a list of "Allows value" defined, you will see a
dropdown list for corresponding attribute in your semantic form.

On Jul 21, 1:48 am, Eep² <e...@tnlc.com> wrote:
> I'm trying to use MediaWiki to create a database for my 3D Game
> Comparison (http://tnlc.com/eep/compare/), and I'm trying to use

> Semantic Forms to create forms (ideally, the one at http://tnlc.com/eep/compare/gameform.html ) for computer/video game

Eep²

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Jul 21, 2007, 7:28:56 PM7/21/07
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Also, I tried making the form into a table, like the game article is, but the form doesn't seem to recognize the wiki table markup.
:/ Ideally, I'd like to have the same exact design for the form and the output.

Yaron Koren

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Jul 21, 2007, 9:22:48 PM7/21/07
to semanti...@googlegroups.com
Okay, there are a lot of questions here:

- it sounds like what you're looking for is an autocomplete - it both
shows available options, lets you enter new values, and helps with
spell-checking and the like. I don't quite understand what the set of
values you want for this field (or fields) is, but you can set
autocompletes to hold either the values of a relation or a category -
check the documentation.

By the way, what you actually might be looking for is a combo box, a
combination autocomplete and dropdown. There was discussion of this on
the mailing list last week. Unfortunately, Semantic Forms doesn't
support combo boxes, though the plan is that they will eventually.

- radioboxes aren't supported in Semantic Forms, though they could be
easily; there hasn't been any request for them yet.

- forms can't be created in wiki markup, only HTML; you can always
look at the source code for the pages, then copy it over as
appropriate for the form. I think it would be possible to have forms
be creatable in wiki markup, though, as before, no one has requested
that feature yet.

One final thought is that, from what I understand of your description,
you might be trying to compress too many things into one form. If you
want users to be able to add games, companies, engines, etc., it makes
sense to have a different form for each of these.

-Yaron

Eep²

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Jul 22, 2007, 10:58:07 AM7/22/07
to semanti...@googlegroups.com
> From: "Yaron Koren" <yar...@gmail.com>
> Sent: Saturday, July 21, 2007 6:22 PM

>
> Okay, there are a lot of questions here:
>
> - it sounds like what you're looking for is an autocomplete - it both
> shows available options, lets you enter new values, and helps with
> spell-checking and the like. I don't quite understand what the set of
> values you want for this field (or fields) is, but you can set
> autocompletes to hold either the values of a relation or a category -
> check the documentation.

But, according to the docs (http://discoursedb.org/SemanticForms/ anyway), "autocomplete" is only for text fields, but I want a
select/dropdown/pulldown list filled with the entries in a category (or categories).

> By the way, what you actually might be looking for is a combo box, a
> combination autocomplete and dropdown. There was discussion of this on
> the mailing list last week. Unfortunately, Semantic Forms doesn't
> support combo boxes, though the plan is that they will eventually.

A combo box would be nice.

> - radioboxes aren't supported in Semantic Forms, though they could be
> easily; there hasn't been any request for them yet.

I'd like to put in a request for this. :)

> - forms can't be created in wiki markup, only HTML; you can always
> look at the source code for the pages, then copy it over as
> appropriate for the form. I think it would be possible to have forms
> be creatable in wiki markup, though, as before, no one has requested
> that feature yet.

Ditto.

> One final thought is that, from what I understand of your description,
> you might be trying to compress too many things into one form. If you
> want users to be able to add games, companies, engines, etc., it makes
> sense to have a different form for each of these.

Yes, as http://tnlc.com/eep/compare/gameform.html : "The final form will have multiple pages to make adding all this information
easier and less overwhelming--at least initially. ;)"

And a general comment: for claiming to not requiring programming skills to use, Semantic Forms actually does require programming. It
really needs a more user-friendly design akin to, say, content mananagement system configurations.

Yaron Koren

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Jul 22, 2007, 1:09:29 PM7/22/07
to semanti...@googlegroups.com
Responding to your questions...

> >
> > - it sounds like what you're looking for is an autocomplete - it both
> > shows available options, lets you enter new values, and helps with
> > spell-checking and the like. I don't quite understand what the set of
> > values you want for this field (or fields) is, but you can set
> > autocompletes to hold either the values of a relation or a category -
> > check the documentation.
>
> But, according to the docs (http://discoursedb.org/SemanticForms/ anyway), "autocomplete" is only for text fields, but I want a
> select/dropdown/pulldown list filled with the entries in a category (or categories).

Which would then be used to populate a text field, I'd assume.

>
> > By the way, what you actually might be looking for is a combo box, a
> > combination autocomplete and dropdown. There was discussion of this on
> > the mailing list last week. Unfortunately, Semantic Forms doesn't
> > support combo boxes, though the plan is that they will eventually.
>
> A combo box would be nice.
>
> > - radioboxes aren't supported in Semantic Forms, though they could be
> > easily; there hasn't been any request for them yet.
>
> I'd like to put in a request for this. :)
>
> > - forms can't be created in wiki markup, only HTML; you can always
> > look at the source code for the pages, then copy it over as
> > appropriate for the form. I think it would be possible to have forms
> > be creatable in wiki markup, though, as before, no one has requested
> > that feature yet.
>
> Ditto.

Combo boxes would indeed be nice; right now it's pending some
improvements from the main Javascript library producers (see the Ajax
thread from before).

I'll look into adding support for the other two.

>
> > One final thought is that, from what I understand of your description,
> > you might be trying to compress too many things into one form. If you
> > want users to be able to add games, companies, engines, etc., it makes
> > sense to have a different form for each of these.
>
> Yes, as http://tnlc.com/eep/compare/gameform.html : "The final form will have multiple pages to make adding all this information
> easier and less overwhelming--at least initially. ;)"

This page always shows up as blank when I go there, by the way.

>
> And a general comment: for claiming to not requiring programming skills to use, Semantic Forms actually does require programming. It
> really needs a more user-friendly design akin to, say, content mananagement system configurations.
>

Well, it depends on whether you consider writing in a markup language
to be programming; I don't, though some people do. That's a bit of a
semantic issue (no pun intended).

As for user-friendliness, I'm always looking for ways to make the
whole system more user-friendly; any suggestions would be welcome.

-Yaron

Eep²

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Jul 22, 2007, 1:58:57 PM7/22/07
to semanti...@googlegroups.com
From: "Yaron Koren" <yar...@gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, July 22, 2007 10:09 AM


>> > - it sounds like what you're looking for is an autocomplete - it both
>> > shows available options, lets you enter new values, and helps with
>> > spell-checking and the like. I don't quite understand what the set of
>> > values you want for this field (or fields) is, but you can set
>> > autocompletes to hold either the values of a relation or a category -
>> > check the documentation.
>>
>> But, according to the docs (http://discoursedb.org/SemanticForms/ anyway), "autocomplete" is only for text fields, but I want a
>> select/dropdown/pulldown list filled with the entries in a category (or categories).
>
> Which would then be used to populate a text field, I'd assume.

Yes, but if "autocomplete" is for text fields, how would I use it on a select list?

>> > One final thought is that, from what I understand of your description,
>> > you might be trying to compress too many things into one form. If you
>> > want users to be able to add games, companies, engines, etc., it makes
>> > sense to have a different form for each of these.
>>
>> Yes, as http://tnlc.com/eep/compare/gameform.html : "The final form will have multiple pages to make adding all this information
>> easier and less overwhelming--at least initially. ;)"
>
> This page always shows up as blank when I go there, by the way.

Should be fixed now; sorry.

>> And a general comment: for claiming to not requiring programming skills to use, Semantic Forms actually does require programming.
>> It
>> really needs a more user-friendly design akin to, say, content mananagement system configurations.
>
> Well, it depends on whether you consider writing in a markup language
> to be programming; I don't, though some people do. That's a bit of a
> semantic issue (no pun intended).
>
> As for user-friendliness, I'm always looking for ways to make the
> whole system more user-friendly; any suggestions would be welcome.

Well, not requiring so much scripting (markup language) would be a start. MediaWiki is fairly bad at adminstration compared to other
CMSes like Drupal, Joomla, XOOPS, etc. For example, you have a form to create a form so why not a form (WYSIWYG) to edit the form
too? Perhaps as an add-on to an existing WYSIWYG extension ( http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/WYSIWYG_editor ) but something more basic
would be sufficient--perhaps even designed with Semantic Forms itself. ;)

Yaron Koren

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Jul 22, 2007, 2:35:25 PM7/22/07
to semanti...@googlegroups.com
> >>
> >> But, according to the docs (http://discoursedb.org/SemanticForms/ anyway), "autocomplete" is only for text fields, but I want a
> >> select/dropdown/pulldown list filled with the entries in a category (or categories).
> >
> > Which would then be used to populate a text field, I'd assume.
>
> Yes, but if "autocomplete" is for text fields, how would I use it on a select list?

Well, you don't really want a select list/dropdown, do you? After all,
you want users to be able to enter their own value, aside from all the
existing values. The ideal solution would be a combo box; until that's
available, the best solution, I think, is an autocomplete.

>

> >
> > As for user-friendliness, I'm always looking for ways to make the
> > whole system more user-friendly; any suggestions would be welcome.
>
> Well, not requiring so much scripting (markup language) would be a start. MediaWiki is fairly bad at adminstration compared to other
> CMSes like Drupal, Joomla, XOOPS, etc. For example, you have a form to create a form so why not a form (WYSIWYG) to edit the form
> too? Perhaps as an add-on to an existing WYSIWYG extension ( http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/WYSIWYG_editor ) but something more basic
> would be sufficient--perhaps even designed with Semantic Forms itself. ;)

Well, it's much easier to implement this kind of administration and
form-creation for regular CMS's because they're not as flexible: they
don't allow all users to collaborate on the structuring of data, which
means you don't need to bother with all this text-based representation
of forms, or with specifying the type of a field on a separate page
from the main form, etc.

A WYSIWYG form editor would be an interesting feature, though it would
be a lot of work to implement. You can always use the HTML editor of
your choice to edit the form, in any case, then substitute the markup
as appropriate.

Using Semantic Forms to edit form-creating forms would require forms
to be defined using semantic markup; I had this idea early on, but it
would require support for n-ary relations, which doesn't exist at the
moment (and it might not even be worth it after then).

-Yaron

Eep²

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Jul 22, 2007, 3:36:59 PM7/22/07
to semanti...@googlegroups.com
From: "Yaron Koren" <yar...@gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, July 22, 2007 11:35 AM


>> >> But, according to the docs (http://discoursedb.org/SemanticForms/ anyway), "autocomplete" is only for text fields, but I want
>> >> a
>> >> select/dropdown/pulldown list filled with the entries in a category (or categories).
>> >
>> > Which would then be used to populate a text field, I'd assume.
>>
>> Yes, but if "autocomplete" is for text fields, how would I use it on a select list?
>
> Well, you don't really want a select list/dropdown, do you? After all,
> you want users to be able to enter their own value, aside from all the
> existing values. The ideal solution would be a combo box; until that's
> available, the best solution, I think, is an autocomplete.

Actually, yes, I do. See, that's the user-friendliness thing again. User-friendly is a select list (or combo box); having to type in
values without knowing what to enter, is a bitch, autocompletion or not--ever been frustrated with your web browser's auto-complete
URL field? I have! I want the select list for existing articles/categories and a text-entry field for "other"/miscellaneous entries
that don't exist in the "database" yet (but will be once approved.

>> > As for user-friendliness, I'm always looking for ways to make the
>> > whole system more user-friendly; any suggestions would be welcome.
>>
>> Well, not requiring so much scripting (markup language) would be a start. MediaWiki is fairly bad at adminstration compared to
>> other
>> CMSes like Drupal, Joomla, XOOPS, etc. For example, you have a form to create a form so why not a form (WYSIWYG) to edit the form
>> too? Perhaps as an add-on to an existing WYSIWYG extension ( http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/WYSIWYG_editor ) but something more
>> basic
>> would be sufficient--perhaps even designed with Semantic Forms itself. ;)
>
> Well, it's much easier to implement this kind of administration and
> form-creation for regular CMS's because they're not as flexible: they
> don't allow all users to collaborate on the structuring of data, which
> means you don't need to bother with all this text-based representation
> of forms, or with specifying the type of a field on a separate page
> from the main form, etc.

Actually, you should take a look at Drupal (http://drupal.org/) because it has such GUI form building (which is nothing new if
you're familiar with Visual BASIC) modules (CCK+Views) which, unfortunately, aren't quite user-friendly enough for me. I'm trying to
use Drupal to create this "database" as well but I keep hitting roadblocks. I know what I want to do but I don't have enough coding
experience (which I don't enjoy doing) to implement it.

Anyway, collaborative data structuring is entirely possible with a GUI; it's just a matter of pulling in all the text-stored into
various GUI controls such as my idea for Second Life's particle editor at http://tnlc.com/eep/sl/#lsl . In Second Life (a
collaborative virtual world 3D environment), editing one of its scripts is near-real-time, in that after you (re)compile it, the
effects are immediately visible. While this reaction time isn't necessarily necessary in MediaWiki, it's a "proof of concept". The
GUI editor would just make editing the underlying script (or a semantic form) easier, more seamless, and, thus, more user-friendly.

> A WYSIWYG form editor would be an interesting feature, though it would
> be a lot of work to implement. You can always use the HTML editor of
> your choice to edit the form, in any case, then substitute the markup
> as appropriate.

Note that the WYSIWYG editor would be for semantic forms, not HTML (even though semantic forms contain HTML, presently, if they
contain wiki markup, that would be another way to "express" the semantic form).

> Using Semantic Forms to edit form-creating forms would require forms
> to be defined using semantic markup; I had this idea early on, but it
> would require support for n-ary relations, which doesn't exist at the
> moment (and it might not even be worth it after then).

Well, that's what this is all about, really: expressing relationships. How the "form" is expressed through a textual interface
(currently) or a GUI (hopefully soon)--and, eventually, a neural interface--depends on its "relational expression" (or "expressed
relationship") between the end-user, the interface, and the end-result (the "form", other relationships that continue the process,
etc).

Anyway, I'm just looking for a way to "dumb-down" the data entry so it doesn't require scripting/programming/whatever to do it and
is "easy" as "doing without thinking" (unconsciously). I like the idea of a semantic web but its interface needs serious work to
make it usable (and practical) to anyone and everyone.

Yaron Koren

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Jul 23, 2007, 11:19:25 AM7/23/07
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To try to avoid boring everyone with this increasingly-esoteric
discussion, let me just respond to the one concrete issue raised:

> I want the select list for existing articles/categories and a text-entry field for "other"/miscellaneous entries
> that don't exist in the "database" yet (but will be once approved.

The idea of having both a dropdown and a text entry for a single field
is one I disagree with, first because I think it's overly complicated,
and second because once you get a large number of options the dropdown
becomes very unwieldy. The combo box solves a number of problems
elegantly, and I think it's a much better solution; and I'm not
planning to implement any "halfway" measures before that one's in.

-Yaron

Eep²

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Jul 23, 2007, 3:41:13 PM7/23/07
to semanti...@googlegroups.com
You are of course entitled to your own design ideas but why limit other people's designed ideas? I think if you went to
http://tnlc.com/eep/compare/gameform.html (it should work now--well, visible anyway; it still doesn't "work", per se) you would see
why I want the design I do (and why a combobox wouldn't cut it). I've never liked comboboxes; they're annoying to use and require
clicking only the arrow to get the select list. I prefer a separate text-entry field for new entries, and I tend to use checkboxes
over multi-select lists since checkbox labels can also have links/popups to more info, unlike entries in select lists (multi- or
normal).

Yaron Koren

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Jul 24, 2007, 9:03:45 AM7/24/07
to semanti...@googlegroups.com
Just to clarify two things: first, I'm not trying to limit anyone's
design ideas - I'm not a fan of the dropdown-plus-text-entry system,
but if someone else wanted to implement such an input type, I'd be
happy to include it.

Second, checkboxes are already supported - you just need to make each
option a separate boolean field.

-Yaron

Eep²

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Jul 29, 2007, 8:26:23 PM7/29/07
to Semantic Forms
Also, having to create a separate semantic form AND a template is
frustrating. This is one of my gripes with Dynamic Page Lists (
http://mediawiki.org/wiki/Dynamic_Page_Lists ) too. DPL requires
separate DPL templates with limited wiki markup (just the table cell
separator "|" and the field names). As you can see, using Semantic
Forms + DPL requires a total of 3 templates + 1 form = 4 cases of
frustration. Being able to do Semantic Forms syntax within an article
would at least reduce the need for the form. I'm trying to persuade
the DPL author to lose the DPL-specific template so that would knock
it down to a single template and embedded article code for DPL syntax.
The key here is to reduce duplication--much like relational database
design--in order to reduce ambiguity and error proneness. Besides,
having to update multiple templates is just plain annoying.

Please consider creating article-embedded syntax for Semantic Forms
similar to how DPL does it without the need for an extra form. HTML
forms are embedded, for example, and Simple Forms (
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Simple_Forms ), which I will
be looking at using instead of Semantic Forms once I can get it to
actually work without giving an error, works this way too.

On Jul 22, 7:58 am, Eep² <e...@tnlc.com> wrote:
> > From: "Yaron Koren" <yaro...@gmail.com>


> > Sent: Saturday, July 21, 2007 6:22 PM
>

Yaron Koren

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Jul 29, 2007, 10:55:25 PM7/29/07
to semanti...@googlegroups.com
Using Semantic Forms in conjunction with Dynamic Page Lists seems like overkill; I don't see what benefit there is in using both. In any case, it sounds like Simple Forms might be better suited for your needs, so good luck with that.

-Yaron

Eep²

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Jul 30, 2007, 12:10:40 AM7/30/07
to semanti...@googlegroups.com
Well, DPL doesn't have any form handling ability; it's just for output. Semantic Forms can't output lists/tables but Semantic
MediaWiki can but it's about as bad (user-unfriendly) in its syntax as DPL is. And SMW's obscure relations/types/attributes make its
list/table output quite confusing and unnecessarily complicated, I feel. Besides, decent categorization can replace most of those
obscurities anyway. The trick is in being able to use GUI and automated category selection based on key terms/phrases, templates,
etc, instead of requiring all of that damn user-unfriendly syntax. Most users aren't programmers so I fail to understand why most
programmers still code for other programmers if they ever hope their apps to be used by real people. A decent search engine
capabable of searching within categories is necessary to--and MediaWiki's search engine is quite craptacular.


From: Yaron Koren
Sent: Sunday, July 29, 2007 7:55 PM

Using Semantic Forms in conjunction with Dynamic Page Lists seems like overkill; I don't see what benefit there is in using both. In
any case, it sounds like Simple Forms might be better suited for your needs, so good luck with that.

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